


another way to fly

by newsbypostcard



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Sam Wilson, Blowjobs, M/M, Minor James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Past Riley/Sam Wilson, Pining, Sam Cap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:02:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7884931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe that's why it hurt so goddamn much, being in love with Steve Rogers: knowing that this was another one he probably wouldn't be able to save.</p><p>(Or: feelings are complicated and nothing makes sense, but the one thing Sam knows for sure is that he's definitely in love with the bastard, even when he doesn't fucking like him very much.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	another way to fly

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a rejected alternate ending from the bigger universe I'm building, but in all its 40k-yet-unposted glory I won't elucidate as to why. Suffice to say that my heart expands for angry, in-unrequited-love Sam Wilson -- thematically relevant here. Tony/Rhodey is background, and we also have past Steve/Bucky and Sam/Riley. Post-Civil War.
> 
> Optional soundtrack: [Drops by Jungle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqLyzHBH2As)

  


  


Sam has fallen in love before. He takes an opportunity when it occurs to him. When it does it's usually slowly, like a gradual grin to the lips, before he really even realizes it's encroaching. 

He'd lived with someone before he was deployed -- _Jessana_ , beautiful beyond words, offering a full smile to counter every one of his coy smirks. They'd kept a sunny apartment, close enough to the city to help her commute but far enough away to offer them a little corner of privacy. 

She'd adopted a tiny pomeranian and named him _Oranges_ because why the hell not, right? Why not name a tiny dog after a fruit. It was such a Jessana thing, to adopt a cute dog and name it something cute and to smile like she was sunshine itself. Sam had loved all of it, loved her, loved the light and the levity she brought to each day.

And then he did get deployed, and --

Well, she's married, now, to a big guy named Olivier. _Olivier and Oranges._ Sam imagines he's one of those gentle giant types who adopted another one of those small purse dogs and named it Apples -- to make her happy, but because it made him happy too.

Sam thinks of her every few weeks and hopes with every part of himself that she's happy; that she still smiles that way, the way she used to with him before Riley went down.

  


  


  


Then there was Riley.

It had been one of those things that had taken years to come to fruition -- how long had he known Riley before they'd even been teamed up? They'd never truly gotten along until they'd been forced into situations where they'd had to trust each other or die; when they'd been forced to reconcile their differences by way of pararescue training. That's when Sam had learned the kind of bond that comes from fighting together in inexplicable contexts is one of the hardest to break.

It had been far from conventional, falling in love with his partner in combat, but it had still felt the same -- like a slow grin, the one that draws on your face when you're falling out of the sky and you know, you just _know_ the other guy's gonna catch you long before you hit the ground.

And that had been the thing of it with Riley -- he'd had his wings, and so had Sam, and so they'd done their equal share of catching the other out of mid-air long before they'd touched with any other intimacy. Then Sam had started to take bigger risks and Riley had started getting angrier about it, and even as he'd burned for him Sam hadn't truly figured out why until Riley only narrowly avoided punching him in the face by kissing him instead. 

That painful, fitful grin had wrapped around them both; given them something neither one of them had known they were looking for and taken them both in whole.

Then, one time, Sam didn't get to him before he hit the ground.

It had only taken the once.

  


  


  


It turns out that falling in love is a whole different process when the other person isn't so much as _looking_ at the sky.

He's not sure what he expected Steve Rogers to be, but it isn't _this_ \-- hot and then cold, present and barely there. Steve smiles like it causes him pain to do it, and the problem is that Sam hurts, too, every time -- deep in his chest, his breath forcing to a halt.

Sam plays the first days of their meetings over and over in his head, trying to figure it out. The route he had run; the way he'd shown up at the VA, even though Sam had been certain he never would. The lilt to his mouth, the one that had drawn Sam's up to match, as though that flirting had been so difficult at the same time it'd been something he couldn't help.

Sam had known the feeling. Every time that spark had lit in him, he'd thought of Riley and faltered. It wasn't exactly a surprise that the next person to make him feel this way would be another goddamn hero type, but maybe that's why it hurt so much, being in love with Steve Rogers.

Knowing that this was another one who'd sooner plummet than pay the cost of saving himself. 

Knowing that this was another one he probably wouldn't be able to save.

  


  


  


It had definitely sucked when the Winter Soldier had taken his wings off, but _sucked_ had turned to _devastating_ when they finally found Steve washed up on the shores of the Potomac. He'd been shot and half-drowned, having fallen out of the sky -- 

\-- no one there to catch him before he hit -- 

\-- and maybe it had been a little insane to sit vigil by the bedside of a man he'd only just met, but Sam had done it anyway. 

Against the odds, Steve had actually woken up. 

So maybe Sam wasn't condemned to love the doomed after all.

  


  


  


Loving a man who doesn't love him back is -- fine. That much, Sam can take. He can take the way this feeling grates at him, wears at him, draws the corners of his mouth perpetually down instead of up. He can take in a breath and pretend at patience every time Steve does something ill-advised in the name of the "friendship" he claims is driving him.

No one goes that far for a friend. Sam knows for a fact Steve would never go that far for him.

And _that's_ the thing he can't quite take -- that Steve lives in a world where freedom exists in hierarchy. Where Sam can find himself saying, "I'll turn myself in so you can be free," and Steve doesn't even look over his shoulder before letting him do it.

That's why Sam packs his bags, once he's out of the Raft. There's a lot Sam can take. He can take, after all, the way being around Steve makes him feel like he's drowning every second. But he knows what happens when you spend too much time around someone whose eyes are always on someone else. 

When you eventually find yourself falling out of the sky, it's not that he won't be there to catch you; it's that he'll barely even notice you fell.

  


  


  


Sam makes enough amends with Camp Stark to be entrusted with Cap's shield. He's not sure he'd call himself Captain America, but the shield makes a difference; it gives him the ability to deflect and steer at the same time, it gives him something to throw around, and it gives him an excuse to get fitter, because god knows that thing is fucking heavy. He just doesn't have the superhuman strength Steve had to carry it with any degree of _skill_ , so… yeah. He hesitates to pretend he's remotely taken over the mantle.

He wonders if Steve knows he's taken over the shield. He wonders if Steve thinks of him at all.

It isn't as though Sam hadn't been _accepted_ among the Avengers before, but now he feels like people make room for him. Things are much smoother now that people have started mistaking him for a Cap replacement. It's to the point that he wonders when the last time anyone stood up to Steve actually was. Maybe that's why Steve had looked the way he had when Sam had finally given in to the thrum of betrayal building in his gut --

_"Look me in the goddamn eye," he'd ground out, temper dangerously close to shattering, "and tell me there wasn't a single second you didn't consider just walking away right then and there and leaving us all to rot."_

_Steve had stared back, chest heaving in time with Sam's, in telling silence. "I can't," he'd said eventually._

_"Then I'm out," Sam had told him. "I'm getting the hell out of here before one of us has their goddamn_ lives _sacrificed for the sake of your priorities--"_

And there it had been: that flicker on Steve's face, something pained and horrific that Sam might've categorized as heartbreak if he hadn't known better.

The shame of being called out, he'd decided. Something that you don't feel so often when you're wearing the title of Captain America as though it was your actual name.

So it's not so bad being fake-Cap overall. It's responsibility, but if there's one thing Sam's sure of, it's where he stands on what is and is not worth sacrificing when it comes to defending freedom.

"You know," Rhodes tells him once, their friendship having budded easily out of shared military history and Sam's dedication to a repentance Rhodes insists he doesn't owe, "you keep saying you're just standing in, but I fail to see what's actually missing from this whole picture. Apart from the uniform, that is."

Sam rolls his eyes and takes a swig of his beer as they stare out over the skyline. "Don't you start now."

"Come on. It seems pretty clear to me that Steve's not interested in coming back--"

A pang in Sam's gut, even now. "So, what, I should just pick up where he left off?"

Rhodes shrugs. "You sure that's what you'd be doing? Just sounds like you're the more qualified candidate, now that he's lost his way."

"I'm pretty certain Cap knows exactly what he's doing."

"Yeah, intentionally divesting himself of any and all responsibility to the global community. I don't see him showing up to Stark Tower with an apology and a box of chocolates."

"Neither did I."

Rhodes shrugs. "Well, everybody makes mistakes."

Sam shoots him a glare. Rhodes just laughs into his beer.

"My point," Rhodes goes on, "is that it seems like part of you is still waiting to see if he's gonna show up and take it back. All of it. The Cap shield, the identity, the eye to justice and freedom you thought he'd always espoused in the first place…"

Sam stares at the ground and doesn't respond.

"I'm suggesting you stop with all that noise," says Rhodes. "I'm saying, either quit pretending you're not a better Captain America than he is or drop the shield altogether and decide you don't need to be halfway of anything. Be the Falcon full-time if that's what you want, and forget about Cap. But either way, you've gotta stop waiting for him to come back, because he's just not going to. Not in the way you want."

Sam nods, slow and tight, and tries to ignore the feeling of falling in his gut. "Maybe you're right," he mutters, and stares out over the horizon.

  


  


  


Three weeks after that, Steve comes back.

Sam's giving his new uniform a test-run. It doesn't breathe very well and it's a thousand degrees out and he feels like he's dying, but the enhancements Stark put into the arms does help him manage the shield a little better, so he at least feels like he's living up to the name. It's a simple enough mission, taken by the airborne contingent mostly to help Rhodes back into the air with a suit retrofitted to make up for his limited mobility, but the wings are digging into Sam's back and there's a shot of nerve pain right behind his shoulder, so when he tosses the shield at the Inhuman shooting at them from the ground it falls way too short.

And Rhodes gets hit in some weakness in his suit. _Again._

Sam catches him, this time. Because that's what he's there to do.

Rhodes is fine and he's laughing, if tiredly, as Sam grunts audibly and fights to get them airborne again. Tony's panicked shouts have retreated back into an endless stream of inchoate muttering in his ear, and he's chasing after the Inhuman in question while telling Sam to get Rhodey on the ground, " _gently,_ please, for the love of god."

Sam might not have even noticed Steve if it hadn't been for all of that.

If he hadn't long since memorized the slope of his shoulders, he might've mistaken the silhouette in the distance for something else entirely. But it is what it is. Sam's head pounds suddenly blinding when he straightens back up again and sees it is Steve Rogers, sure enough, staring at him in the middle distance and holding the shield tight on his arm as though he'd never let go of it.

"Holy fuck," says Stark in his ear. Sam looks up to see him soaring high above, apparently not satisfied by assurances alone that Rhodes is _fine_. "Is that who I think it is?"

Rhodes, seated safely behind a car for cover, takes off his helmet and looks at Sam with wide eyes, shaking his head. Sam pinches his fingers to his eyes only for them to smack against his goggles instead. "We don't have time for this. Stark, you at least keeping a visual?"

"On the enemy we're fighting? Yes. On the other enemy I'm about to fight? No."

"Stay on task, damnit. I'm right behind you."

"Rhodey?" says Stark.

"I'm fine," Rhodes says into his earpiece.

"How's your sensitivity? You didn't get a shock when the suit went down? You're behind cover?"

"I'm fine, Tony, get moving." Rhodes nods at Sam and Sam shakes his head at him and takes off into the air, heading straight for Steve goddamn Rogers in contravention of every ounce of good sense he thinks he's ever had.

"Shield!" he shouts when he gets near; and Steve looks up with a subdued half-smile and holds it in the air for Sam to grab without a second's hesitation.

Sam doesn't even look back as he swoops around the corner toward where he can hear Stark fighting.

The Inhuman goes down about ten minutes later, pain radiating out from Sam's shoulders and neck the entire time. "How's the suit?" Tony asks him, his facemask peeling back as the Iron Legion comes streaking in to secure the situation.

"I'm in hell," says Sam draggingly.

"Great. I'm gonna go get in a fight with Steve Rogers."

Sam catches him with a hand on his arm. "No you're not."

"You're not the boss of me."

"Let me put it this way. Right now Rhodes is sitting in the middle of a city street littered with accident debris, fully immobile, without a functional suit. We don't know if there's gonna be backup following his chemtrails or what--"

Tony blinks at him. " _Chemtrails_?"

"-- so, yeah, my recommendation is that you leave your vendetta at _home_ and go help your boyfriend. We don't even know why Steve's here. Let me do the recon."

"You think my state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind nanoparticle exoskeleton suits give off _chemtrails_? What do you take me for, a hack? While we're at it, what should I take you for, some kind of conspiracy theorist?"

"Take me for whatever you want, Stark, but I know how much pain I'm in right now and it's not such a goddamn far cry for me to think you had no idea what you were doing when you were making this thing." Sam takes out his earpiece and tosses it to Stark without a second's hesitation, and then he takes off into the sky again, teeth grit, shield gripped tightly in hand, to go defend himself to Steve Rogers for reasons he's not entirely clear on.

It's probably not surprising that Sam finds Steve crouched by Rhodes' side, but it is extremely fucking annoying. 

Steve turns when Sam lands softly behind him, just as Sam is ripping his goggles off from around his eyes. "What the hell are you doing here?" Sam grinds out before Steve can get a word in.

Steve gives a half-smile and lets his head hang. "I was in the neighbourhood and heard a commotion."

"You were in the _neighbourhood._ "

"You heard a 'commotion'?" Rhodes asks, pained, behind him.

Steve smiles. Sam stares back, head and heart pounding.

"Yeah," Steve says eventually, to both of them.

Sam waits for more. There isn't any.

"Nice suit," Steve adds, gesturing at Sam.

"Thank you," Sam says flatly.

"Stark include magnets in the sleeves?"

"There, and in the gloves."

"Helps, doesn't it? That thing is heavier than it looks."

"You don't have to tell me. Really, you don't. I know you came all this way from wherever your love den is these days, but there's nothing more to say here, so buh-bye."

"Sam." 

"Don't you have a boyfriend to finish defrosting or something?"

Steve blinks at him, taking his anger as though built for it. "Do you want me to explain?"

"Not really. How you doing, Rhodes?"

"I'm good," Rhodes says. "Tony says he's taking a lap. Something about waiting for the air to clear." His eyes flit to Steve.

"Guess that's your cue to go," Sam tells him. " _Again._ "

"I was hoping we could talk," says Steve.

Sam bristles. "What the hell is there to talk about?"

"Come on, Sam. I don't like how we left things."

"You mean when you walked away from everything you used to stand for? Yeah, that sticks in my gut a bit too."

"When I took a personal day," Steve says patiently, "yes."

"Are you -- being serious? Because what you took didn't look anything like a _personal day_ from where I was standing."

"Uh," says Rhodes, "okay, _now_ Tony says he's gonna land whether Steve's here or not, so if I may humbly suggest you lovebirds move this somewhere else--"

"Man, shut the hell up," Sam spits automatically.

Steve smiles thinly and looks to the sky before flitting his gaze over to Rhodes. He looks just the same, Sam thinks; he looks exactly as goddamn gorgeous as he ever did. "Fine," Steve says. "I'll go. Message received. Sorry for the inconvenience. It was good to see you, Rhodey. I'm glad to hear you're doing okay."

"Thanks, Steve. Good to see you too."

And with raised eyebrows and his hands shoving into his pockets, Steve turns and walks away without another word.

Sam looks after him with clenching teeth, letting the pounding in his head wash over him; and as Tony appears in the distance, Sam claps Rhodes on the shoulder and pushes stubbornly into the air again.

"Fine," Sam mutters, hitting the button to fold his wings away as he lands soft beside him. "But let's make this quick."

Steve smiles at him, sidelong. "You wanna change your clothes first? It's 90 degrees. You look like death."

"I'm fine," he grunts; but then Steve looks at him with that half-smile Sam remembers from years ago, and when his stomach falls he finds himself saying instead, "Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever."

"Take a shower if you want. I'm not in any rush."

Sam stops himself from saying, _What is this, some kind of date?_ but it's a narrow thing, it's a very narrow thing, because at the same time that he hates himself for it he finds himself still hoping to god it could be.

It isn't. Sam knows that it isn't. After nearly a year without seeing the bastard, of convincing himself of who he really is, he should sure as shit know better by now.

  


  


  


It is definitely, without a doubt, some kind of date.

Sam hadn't noticed due to the dread he'd felt upon seeing the imposing line of his shoulders against the horizon, but Steve's wearing a t-shirt that matches the colour of his eyes and accentuates the precise bulge of his muscles. He stands when Sam steps onto the patio of the bar, and Sam does his best to scowl at him through the absurd tension thrumming in him, even if Steve can't see him do it through Sam's sunglasses.

Absently, he flexes his arms over his chest as he throws himself into the chair opposite Steve. "What do you want," he says, before even bothering to let Steve get comfortable.

Steve peers up at him through his eyebrows and coughs out a laugh as he pulls his chair in behind him. "I want to apologize."

"Do you now."

"Yes. You -- had a point. Before."

It's a sidestep of impressive proportions. "What about, exactly?"

"About the fact that I checked out of what we were supposed to be fighting for, for a while."

Steve blinks at him, as good and innocent as he ever is, and yet at once oblivious that he has failed to say anything of impact whatsoever. "That is incredibly vague," Sam says flatly. "You wanna give me something of substance here, or are you gonna keep uttering half-truths just to see how long it takes me to be tricked into--"

"I didn't show up for you," Steve interrupts him. "When it counted. When you got yourself arrested for me. I didn't show up for you fast enough."

Despite himself, Sam feels himself softening. It is, at least, a start.

"You barely showed up for me at _all_ ," Sam says.

"I know," says Steve. "And I'm sorry, Sam. You gotta know I am."

"Why would I know that when you literally _and_ figuratively just turned your back on me when I said I was out?"

Steve stares at him and doesn't reply.

The server saves them from the moment by cropping up beside him. "I'll have a pint of whatever's on tap," Sam mutters sidelong, not taking his eyes off Steve.

"Your companion already bought one for you," she says, and Sam glances up to see a beer being already deposited in front of him.

This raises his ire. He besets an empty stare on Steve once more. "Did he now."

"Peace offering," says Steve.

"Without _asking me._ Without--"

"I know your beer order, Sam."

All the hair on Sam's neck stands up. "You think you can just show up after a year of fuck-all and just--"

"Thank you," Steve says to the server quietly, and Sam collapses into himself, furious.

Steve waits. Steve always goddamn fucking waits.

"The suit looked good on you, Sam," he says, when Sam's forcibly unfolded himself again. "I mean it. I'm glad you took it over."

"Recent thing," Sam says, and snatches the beer angrily off the table. "Been using the shield a little longer. That why you come back? Reports of Captain America sightings draw you out?"

"No."

"Trouble in paradise, then."

Steve only smiles at him, that halfway thing that gets under his skin. Sam winces as he puts the glass back down on the table and swallows. "Just give me a straight answer for once in your life, would you?"

"What's your question?" asks Steve.

"Where's Barnes?"

"I don't know," he says quietly.

This startles Sam into silence. He blinks a few times, waiting for the next question to come to him. "Why not?" he says eventually.

"We parted ways a while ago."

"Did you."

He doesn't look particularly devastated by it; he just looks accepting, if his form is tense. "We figured out a safeguard for the trigger in his head, spent a bit of time catching up, and then he -- left."

"He just… left."

"Yup. He bought a train ticket, I walked him to the station, and then I walked home. Well -- home. Temporary safehouse. Same thing."

"Just like that?"

"I mean, I had a hard time with it at first. But I understand his reasons."

Sam shakes his head, incredulous. "You fought tooth and nail to secure his freedom -- you dropped _everything_ for that guy -- and then once you finally do it, he just up and _leaves_?"

Steve is still smiling, something infuriatingly well-adjusted. Sam hates it on him. "That is exactly the kind of opportunity I was fighting to give him."

Sam shakes his head, slow. "Man, you got zen while you were gone."

"Not really. Punched my way through my share. Just starting to figure out where I went wrong."

"And where's that?"

Steve looks like he might actually say something in reply to that, but the rise and fall of his chest tells him the words got stuck somewhere. His gaze falls to the centre of the table, and, inexplicably, Sam almost _pities_ him for a second.

"So you got lonely," Sam guesses.

"That's not it."

"No? You telling me I'd be seeing you sitting in front of me right now if your boy hadn't up and left you?"

A flicker of pain on his face before his eyes close. "Sam."

"Oh, don't tell me that hurt you. You ever think this might be karma?"

He adjusts his head and looks at Sam direct. "Every day."

"Don't pull that martyr shit with me."

"All right, fine," Steve sighs. "Is there _anything_ I can say to you to make this right?"

Sam forcibly averts his face and drinks steadily from his ill-begotten beer.

"I'm not trying to 'pull that martyr shit' when I say this," Steve continues.

"No?" he bites back automatically, voice coarse.

"But you can go if you want to go, Sam. I'm trying to apologize but I don't want to _make_ you hear it if you're not interested."

"What did you expect from this conversation, exactly?"

"Expect? Nothing. Hope? To be friends again." Steve looks at him, steady. "Why are _you_ here, Sam?"

 _I just can't seem to say no to you,_ he thinks, but doesn't say anything.

"Okay," Steve says, when the silence spans on for too long. "Let's get down to brass tacks. I hurt you."

"Christ," Sam mutters, rolling his eyes.

"I can see that I hurt you. I'm sorry. I was selfish, I was in my own head. I was clinging a little too hard to the past, and it took me a while to get over that."

"What's changed?"

"Bucky changed me," Steve says simply. "He made a lot of good arguments."

"Which were?"

"That we need a different life. Than we had. Before the ice made us lose our way."

"So I'm the _instrument_ to make that happen for you."

" _No._ I'm here trying to make amends, but I'm also trying to move on. On my own. I want you part of it, if you want that too."

"Because, what, I pulled the short straw?"

"Because I miss you, Sam."

Sam stares at him, heart pounding anew. "I thought you were 'just in the neighbourhood'."

"You know better."

"Why?"

"I wanted to see you in action."

"What, as Cap?"

"Yeah."

" _Why?_ "

"I--"

The expression breaks over his face like a wave, starting at his brow and swelling to the grit of his teeth. He's squinting hard against the sun and the steeple of his brow leaves Sam breathing ragged.

"I don't know," he says eventually, shrugging an idle shoulder, gaze focused on the table.

Something falls into place for Sam, then -- forces his back straight, his body rigid.

"Oh," he manages, pointedly.

Steve's fingers are pulling at some splinters at the arm of his chair. "You looked good," he says again. "Shield, suit. Wings."

"Yeah," says Sam. "Thanks." It's as though his body has suddenly forgotten how to be angry, all at once.

"I didn't come to take it back, if that's your concern. The identity."

"Hadn't crossed my mind."

"You wouldn't have given it to me even if I had."

"Probably not."

Steve's eyes finally find his again, his mouth pinching into a smile. Sam sighs, then throws his sunglasses onto the table and rubs at his eyes. "Definitely not," he amends, then drops his hands. "Man, you just show up and cause trouble sometimes, you know that?"

"I've been told."

"So you're just here to be friends."

"Kinda figured that's all I could hope for."

"Just like that, your boyfriend leaves you and you come crawling back to your second choice?"

"It wasn't like that with Bucky, first of all, and second of all it's not like that with you."

"Sounds that way to me."

"Me and Bucky parted ways, amicably, _months_ ago--"

"Amicably, but not mutually."

"If I'd had the choice, would I have wanted him to stay? Yeah. But he didn't want to stay, and I accepted that."

Sam shakes his head, sighing out of his nose. "You sure do know how to woo a guy."

"Do you want me to tell you that my feelings are simple? They're not. I wish they were. I wish I could tell you I've only had eyes for you for the last three years, but that's just not the case. I'm not going to lie to you, Sam."

Sam bristles. "What are you aiming for here? Do you even know?"

"Honesty."

"Well, you're definitely succeeding at that."

Steve looks at him. Sam takes his time in looking at him back.

"We don't have to do this," Steve says.

"Apparently we do, you showing up like this."

"I can take it back. I can go."

"Walk away again, just like that? Man, nothing's changed, has it."

Steve splays his hands out on either side of him. "I feel like I can't win with you."

"Mutual," he bites back.

Steve looks at him and cocks his head. Sam always was fucking weak for that puppy shit. "I miss you, Sam. You don't have to miss me back."

"Of course I miss you, Steve, that's the whole goddamn--" Sam swallows. Steve waits. "Problem," he finishes. "Wish I didn't, but I do. I don't want fucking crumbs."

"I'm not trying to offer you crumbs. I'm offering a truce, that's it."

"A truce."

"Yeah. We don't have to work together on the same team if you don't want, but I'll be around. I'll show up when you need me. I'm trying to tell you that I'll -- be _around_. That I'll show up for you. When you need me. Now."

There's a grate to it, amplifying the ring of sincerity in his fumbled repetition. Sam finds himself being taken in by it, and he hates it, hates Steve, almost as much as he hates himself. "Fine," he says. He grits his teeth at the table and looks up at him, stare hard and accusing. "But I'm Captain America now."

Steve offers a smile, something uncertain but authentic. "Good. I'm relieved. I don't want it."

"And we're not done talking. It's gonna take me a while before I trust you again."

"I deserve that."

"I'm not interested in halfways. I want to know what's up with you."

"I'll do my best to let you know."

Sam nods and nods, and finally leans back in his chair. "Okay then," he sighs, furious at himself.

"Okay?"

He stares. "Okay."

And such a hope steeples at Steve's brow that Sam has to look away to keep himself from wanting to kiss him. 

"So what've you been up to, last few months?" he mutters instead, trying to drive himself the hell away from this place. "Apart from the obvious moping around trying to get your head on straight."

Steve leans back in his chair, kicking his feet out in front of him, ignoring Sam's rancor outright. "Not much, to be honest. Lots of little attacks on Hydra bases, or what was left of them. Can't do much just me, but I'm getting better at stealth."

"Thank god for small miracles."

He smiles. "That's what Natasha said."

Something churns in Sam's gut again. It would seem no topic is safe. "You been keeping in touch with her?"

Steve nods. "She sought me out. I probably wouldn't have if she wasn't so persistent."

"You cut yourself off from everyone, then."

"That was kind of the idea. Can't help what other people do." Steve shoots him a glance. "You really not know that?"

"What?"

"That Natasha'd been in touch. I know you've been seeing a lot of her."

"I wouldn't say a lot, but yeah, she swings by the tower."

"You living there now?"

"Until such a time as there is no longer a warrant out for my arrest, yeah."

Steve's eyebrows shoot up. "That still hasn't been resolved?"

"Not to my knowledge. Why should it be? Tony's in good with the police, but that doesn't erase the whole violated-international-treaties, broke-out-of-ocean-prison thing."

"The _illegal_ ocean prison?"

Annoyance flickers in him. "Jesus, man, you really still that naive after all that? You think anyone gives a shit about the alleged illegality of a prison no one can prove ever existed? It's gone off the radar again, totally AWOL, but don't think that'll stop anyone from arresting me for something that doesn't exist."

Steve's looking at him with the kind of evenness that suggests he's just figured something out.

"I didn't show up for you," he mutters again, mostly to himself.

"No," Sam says, tone flat. "You didn't."

Steve nods and nods and holds his eye. He does not apologize.

Inexplicably, Sam feels relieved. "You gonna think twice, next time, before letting someone turn themselves into prison for you?" he says then, fingers turning his paper coaster over in his hands again and again.

"Yeah," Steve says at once. "What happened in Leipzig… that won't happen again, Sam. You have my word."

"How's it gonna be different now?" he asks, raising his chin.

"I'm not gonna let anyone take the fall next time. Not anyone. Not if I can possibly help it."

And there's that feeling again, expanding hot out of his chest: like he can't stand this, being near Steve Rogers, but that he can't quite move away either.

"Then," Sam says, tapping the edge of the coaster hard against the table, "I guess I should say welcome back."

Hope and happiness dawn on Steve's face again, and with the blue of his shirt it's like looking at a summer's day. 

"Thanks, Sam." He looks like he means it, pink lips pulling tight. "I'm glad to be back."

"Yeah, whatever. Show up for me next time." 

"I will."

"We'll see about that." Sam drains the last of his beer and slams the glass on the table, just for something decisive to do. "You want another?" he says, forcing the tension out of his shoulders.

"Sure," Steve says; and after a beat of stubborn silence he hooks an elbow over the back of his chair and smiles at him, something beautiful, something that roots under Sam's skin and makes him _want_.

Sam orders them a pitcher, because he's an idiot.

  


  


  


Only one of them can get tipsy, but Sam forgets this until his hands are forcibly pulling Steve's stupid shirt off his perfectly chiseled form. 

"This is a bad idea," he mutters, mostly to himself, even as he grips at Steve's hips.

"We don't have to," says Steve.

"Shut up," says Sam, unwilling to be distracted from the fact that he's finally got Steve fucking Rogers under his hands. "You fall out of shape at _all_ while you were out of the fight?"

"Don't think I can."

"That's the -- stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"You been hanging onto this for a while, Sam?" It sounds like a legitimate question, but then Steve's lips are trailing over Sam's shoulders, so any reply he might've had becomes a moan instead. Maybe that's answer enough, in the end.

"I'm -- I caught Rhodes out of the sky today."

"I know. I saw you do it."

"That man weighs enough even before Stark's so-called 'lightweight polymer' suit."

"Yeah. There's tension here -- and here--" Steve strokes long fingers across the lines of him.

"Christ. You're a tease. Of course you'd be a goddamn tease."

"You looked _really good_ today, Sam."

"I look good every day."

"Yeah." He sucks at Sam's clavicle and Sam is fucking dizzy; he has to hold at Steve's back to stay upright.

It's been a long day, it's been a long three years, and Steve's hands are better than he'd expected -- swift enough, grabbing when they needed to, seeming to know him even before he'd managed to pull his own shirt off. Steve's hand comes up to adjust Sam's chin, now that they've disrobed at least partially, and Steve kisses him open and hot, Steve's hands pulling his pants open, tugging at his waistband, wrapped around his dick.

And Sam is stupid with it, Sam is looking at the ceiling and trying not to fall, but Steve's fingers are rough and good and sure and Sam's body aches with every superhero thing he'd had to do that day. 

And here is _Steve Rogers_ taking him apart at the end of it.

He halts where he is, lets Steve stroke him off; swallows hard. _Fuck,_ he thinks, but he must say it aloud too because Steve smiles and braces his other hand at the back of his head, leans him onto the bed. "Those doors still lock, right?" Steve asks him.

"Manner of speaking," Sam says, then clears his throat against the gravel in it. "FRIDAY's still Stark's system."

"He could override."

"Yeah."

"That bother you?" Steve mutters, tugging off his pants, nosing at the hair framing his dick.

"No. You?"

"Nope." Steve kisses at his hip, Sam's pants are gone, Steve's shoulders disappear as he falls to his knees, and this feels nothing at all like the first time they've done this. It feels more like the thousandth for how familiar Steve is with him, how easily his hand wraps around him -- like he knows him. Like he's thought this through.

Sam hisses and cants his hips, gripping at Steve's hair, thick and glorious and giving Sam instant control. Steve hums against his skin, puts his lips right next to his cock, and Sam has to roll his head back to avoid thinking too hard about this. 

"This is nothing like I thought it'd be," he says, trying to distract himself.

"No?"

"Thought I'd be the one--"

Steve's palm around the head of his cock; his lips at its base. "Yeah?"

Sam licks his lips once, then again, pulling hard at Steve's hair and trying to ignore the way Steve's mouth curves into a smile against his dick when he does. "Thought you'd be the one moaning in front of _me_."

"We got time."

"Do we?"

"Don't we?"

"You wanna do this again?"

"Don't you?"

"Stop answering questions with questions. Not thinking that hard right now."

"You seem to be thinking just hard enough to me."

Sam raises his head and glares at him. "Is now the time to get fucking clever?"

"You're the one who keeps talking." Steve looks right at him, bright and committed, and seals his mouth around one of Sam's balls, and _fuck,_ okay, fuck. "You've had a long day, Sam."

"Yeah," he says throatily, forcing his fingers to unclench.

"Let me handle it."

If Sam was going to reply, he forgets it in a steadying exhale.

He doesn't forget everything. He doesn't forget that Steve's shown up months or a year or three years too late; that he's freshly returned from having given up everything to be with someone else, only for him to up and leave as though it'd meant nothing. But it isn't as though Steve isn't present; Sam can tell he is, can tell he feels at least some of what Sam does, from the way his hands grasp at his thighs; from the way he hums as he wraps his tongue in impossible ways around his cock.

"Sam," Steve is muttering, full of heat, open-mouthed at his skin. "Sam, Sam."

Sam risks enough of his control to look down at him, to see the grip of his hands against his skin and the way his eyes are fluttering closed, and he thinks, _fuck_ , he knows that Steve wants this, wants _him_ \-- that this is not the hookup Sam has been trying to convince himself it is.

"If you don't fucking move," he says, looking at him, and Steve's eyes flit up to his. He smiles something _wicked_ , his tongue wetting his lips, and he doesn't say a word but Sam feels as though he's understood something anyway.

His lips breach around the head of him, and Steve takes Sam steadily, steadily down.

Sam holds his fingers in Steve's hair and, slowly, pushes his hips forward. His muscles scream, his breath is short; it comes to him haggard and leaves again tight. 

"Fuck," he whispers, and lets Steve up again. He had been trying to hard, so _fucking_ hard, to tell himself that this was casual. He is a modern man, he can approach this encounter the way he has countless others. The fact that it's Steve is incidental, he'd told himself. This is the same as any of the others he's brought into his bed. 

But the heat spreading in him says otherwise. Steve gives _such_ good head, he _brings_ something to it, like knelt in front of him is where he wants to be -- making him feel like this, risking getting his ass kicked, half-undressed on Tony Stark's property.

Nothing about this is casual. With every cant of his hips, Sam realizes he still feels like he's falling.

The thing of it is that Steve is -- here, now. His hands are so sure, gripping against him; learning him, mapping him, holding him down. He's setting some pace with his mouth that Sam can't stand, stimulating enough without getting him all the way there. Sam keeps his eyes shut tight, terrified to look at him -- terrified that if he looks down, it won't really be Steve. 

But those are Steve's hands, suddenly firm, holding Sam's hips hard against the bed. 

"Be still," Steve mutters -- _Steve_ mutters -- pausing to lick a stripe down the length of him. 

"Be still," Sam repeats acidly, forcing his eyes open at the same time as he throws his head back. "Anyone told you lately you're a public menace?"

"Where are you right now?"

"Right fucking here."

"No, you're too tense. Still feeling that fight?"

"I guess."

"Badly?"

"No, it's -- fine. It's--"

Steve moves his hands to scan over Sam's legs. His breath is hot against Sam's dick, and _oh my god,_ Sam thinks, _he means to take me right apart._

"Let go," Steve murmurs against his skin.

"Let go of _what_?"

"The fight. I'm doing some of my best work here and you're rigid like a steel beam. _Relax,_ Sam."

"You are in fact doing no work at all right now, and I for one--"

But Sam gets cut off when Steve takes him into his mouth again, all the way down to his throat, one palm pressing against his hip as though to hold him to the bed without putting any real strength behind it. 

"You're not in charge right now," Steve mutters, once his mouth has come off him again.

"I'm always in charge," he says hoarsely, trying to get breath in his chest. "We talked about this."

"In the field, yeah. Here, no."

"Steve."

"Being Captain America is hard. Gotta let go."

"Is that what you did? Let go?"

"Often enough."

Sam is waylaid from replying by the moan that cuts out of Steve's throat as he pushes down and then off him again, and he isn't wrong, in the end; Sam's back is a hard line, pained and on guard, preventing himself from enjoying this the way he wishes he could. "Okay," Sam hisses through his teeth. "You ever consider it's not the battle that's the problem?"

"You're not still managing to be pissed at me right now."

"Actually, no."

"Then what's the problem?"

There's a bit of a pause, and when Sam doesn't reply Steve almost seems to _worry._

"How long have you been holding onto this, Sam?" His voice is soft and he's asked it before, but this time he wants an answer. Steve's looking up at him along the line of Sam's torso, lips still hot at his skin, pressing a slow, steady line of kisses as he waits for his answer.

He has to look to the corner of the room, away from him, to keep his expression neutral. "Long enough," he gravels.

Steve nods, his nose a caress against his skin. "Well, let go of that, too."

"Let go of--"

"I seem like I'm on the brink of leaving right now?"

"No, but this was supposed to be--"

"What? A one-time thing, because you were half-drunk and feeling it?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"Well, I'm not feeling very casual right now, Sam. You feeling casual?"

A pause, then, throatily -- "No."

"So don't be. Give in."

"I'm just supposed to--"

"Give in," Steve repeats, and fucking _kisses_ his dick, first chaste, then again and again, opening, full. "Let go."

And he can't, at first; the tension still draws tight in him, fueled by some sense of injustice that Steve can just show _up_ like this and kneel before him like it's nothing, like it's perfectly natural, like he's _thought about breaking him down_. All Sam's been trying to do for the last however many months or years has been to try to forget him, to ignore all these feelings, to pretend he never cared for Steve at all, and now here he _is_ , proving him devastatingly wrong.

With his head craned back like this and his hips shifting subtly against the attentions of Steve's mouth, desperate to keep still and fighting for friction at once, Sam feels it all ebb away -- the fury of it; the tension bridging thick in him.

He breathes deep; he opens his eyes. He spreads his arms out on either side of him and leaves his fingers loose. He lets it all go.

He lets himself fall.

Steve's smiling when he takes him down again, Sam can tell, and Sam shuts his eyes and breathes against the heat pooling in his gut. He lets his hips cant every time Steve seals his lips around him, seals his throat around him, runs his tongue along him wide; and when Sam finds it in him to look down again, Steve's looking right back, not hiding a thing, unabashed in his pleasure as his mouth sets about destroying him.

"I got you," Steve mutters, voice wrecked, between particularly spirited attempts at bringing Sam to completion with the close of his throat alone; and with his hands scanning over his legs, his hips, his chest, grasping and sure, Sam finds the heat in his gut forces a fold at his brow and a sting in his throat when he finally is brought over the edge.

Steve is there; Steve stays, holds him through it. "That's better," he mutters when Sam's finally collapsed against the bed again; and Sam wants to agree but can't make his voice work, so he only hooks an elbow around Steve's neck as he crawls up the length of him and kisses him, hot and fierce, saying with action what he can't manage in words.

"You're goddamn good at that," Sam tells him, when he figures out how to activate his throat again.

And Steve only grins and kisses him, open and unreserved with his hands at his back; and there's that feeling again, crawling in him, his stomach swooping with thrill.

It's then that Sam figures out that this is nothing like falling -- unless, of course, falling is just another way to fly.

  


  


  


(epilogue).

  
Sam wakes up trying to figure out why Stark left one of those sculptures from an art museum laying sidelong in his bed before he figures out that it's actually Steve.

Steve is still in Sam's bed, one knee propped out of the blanket to support the back of a folded up newspaper; and it's another several confused seconds of blinking before he figures out that he's doing a goddamn crossword puzzle.

"What," Sam gravels, eyes dragging slow over him as he disentangles himself from the remnants of sleep, "the _hell_ are you doing?"

"Sunday crossword," Steve says, as though this should be a both obvious and natural in the progression of their relationship.

"It's Wednesday, first of all."

"Yeah, it is. Tony not believe in recycling or is this just laziness?"

"Second of all--"

"Made you some coffee."

"--it's six-thirty in the morning."

"Is there some kind of timeframe on doing the crossword that I don't know about?"

Sam feels the smile spreading slow over his face before he realizes it's happening. "How do _you_ even finish a crossword? Don't like half the references that go right over your head?"

"Yup." Steve reaches over to the table on the other side of the bed and hands Sam a steaming mug of coffee. "That's why you should help me."

"You want me to help you do the New York Times Sunday crossword at six-thirty on a Wednesday morning."

"Yeah. You got a problem with that?"

That swooping feeling is warm in his gut and hot in his chest, and his smile disappears at once, replaced by all of that falling, or _flying_ , or whatever the fuck.

"You mean apart from the fact that you're a lunatic?" Sam says harshly.

But Steve still knows him after all this time, so he smiles fondly and says, "Yeah," and then he takes away the very mug he just put into Sam's hands and leans forward to kiss him, with a hand at his jaw.

"You're a goddamn lunatic," Sam says again, only this time it's caught in a whisper and he's rolling over Steve where he's sitting in his bed. He's straddling close over him, his fingers are set against Steve's perfect cheekbones, he's opening his mouth to him so full and wanting, and--

Falling in love has been something that's left him devastated, waiting for impact; waiting to look down and learn that Steve doesn't see him at all. But with Steve's hands on his back and this smile on his lips as Sam's control unravels, he's finally learned better.

Steve breaks the rules. It's what he does. He survives the falls he takes, and he takes Sam in, even when it should be too late -- just because it feels the same as if he'd planned to show up all along.

  


  



End file.
